ISG Provider Lens™ Contact Center / Customer Experience Services - Global 2019
Contact centers have gradually evolved from mere query resolution roles to end-to-end customer experience service providers. The outsourcing models have changed accordingly. The contact center outsourcing participants have started looking beyond delivering optimal quantitative agent performance measurement parameters. They are gradually exploring ways to boost revenue generation through quantifying, and in turn maximizing, customer satisfaction. This ISG Provider Lens study has identified a few trends in the contact center customer experience transformation business.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been one of the most leveraged technology areas in the drive to enhance CX. Most enterprise clients have considered harnessing the power of AI through a product or a pure services format to deliver offer management, service excellence and other functions and performance improvements. Enabling AI in a managed service format is relatively new, and service providers have been moving toward filling this white space. The trend that started with converting data to actionable insights with the aid of analytics has expanded across several segments of contact center operations.
AI implementation in a contact center environment essentially has two components. The first is services, which involves data engineering. The second is the workflow on an AI platform that is equipped with elements of machine learning, natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) and is capable of providing recommendations and executing constant learning.
- Speech analytics and conversational AI have been major disruptors in the contact center space. A fundamental capability of speech analytics is to enable speech-to-text conversion. To have a holistic view of a situation, such as a client complaint, a customer response tools should pull additional data from other parts of the client ecosystem. Service providers make use of various use cases to deliver solutions that scan all the previous calls, identify relevant calls and put them in queues. Once the risk attributes are identified, a few streamlined calls are listened to and the customer is offered a solution based on history, vision and the value of the end customer. Conversational AI can be looked upon as a cascading effect of speech analytics. The idea of creating more value out of voice processes through real time machine assistance, virtual help for agents and other functions that make the channels more intelligent and seamless has driven service providers to explore conversational AI.
- The contact center industry is rapidly moving toward non-voice driven business models. More queries will be handled through automated processes without human intervention. Accordingly, robotic process automation (RPA) has evolved from a basic touch-and-feel, point-and-work creation method to the development of more intelligent bots that can perform functions such as sending emails and chat decisions to customers, moving between old and new applications, spotting anomalies and making necessary corrections. Bots, thus, are moving toward becoming complex decision-making agents.
Service providers’ consulting expertise is helping organizations identify use cases and reengineer processes to optimally use these complex bots. Furthermore, several service providers have been reportedly focusing on upstream opportunities across the customer lifecycle. To provide more machine assistance to leverage more direct and indirect business opportunities, AI (in the form of a bot or a self-service tool) is used to continuously measure customer sentiment, and course correct if necessary.
- Apart from supporting digital transformation from a technology standpoint, service providers are also looking at the change management that they can implement for their clients. Digital transformation necessitates a structured change management protocol. This is due to the upgrade requirement for implementations, as well as the analytics-driven upstream-downstream changes, which the provider can recommend to the client. This requires a level of consulting expertise to help in defining and deciding what to change, and to create a virtual cycle that delivers continuous innovations. Likewise, service providers with established consulting capabilities are disrupting the contact center outsourcing landscape. Several service providers have developed their own digital customer management frameworks, which are often led by consulting with bundled features. These features focus on enabling end-to-end transformation, understanding the landscape, identifying possibilities and then developing the future state. The consulting frameworks identify possible risks, and the consultants pitch in to mitigate the risk factors with outcome-based pricing.
- Most contact centers are using omnichannel capability as a major tool for their digital transformation. Omnichannel refers to the collection of data through intelligent channels. The omnichannel layer in the digital customer service ecosystem is one of the key capabilities each of the service providers are looking toward leveraging. With successful omnichannel customer interactions, the service providers can progress beyond customer contact management, such as deriving insights on customer needs from a lifecycle perspective or individual query perspective. Moreover, shifting customer queries from voice to non-voice is intrinsically dependent on omnichannel capabilities, and thus provides a competitive edge to any player. This translates to strengthening the back office or middle office by delivering a model of technologydriven front office and platform-led transformation for the back and middle offices.
- Design thinking plays a significant role. Organizations are using design thinking to guide mapping the end-to-end customer journey, revising their operating models, implementing innovative solutions in the user experience and user interface (UX/UI) areas in collaboration with technology teams, and for identifying process reengineering possibilities. Several service providers considered acquiring design thinking specialist firms with proprietary platforms to map the customer journey with a digital consulting wrap around.